


and i'll die by your side if you want me to

by Dylanobrienisbatman



Series: Chopped Challenge Fics [5]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (okay i just need to say that im so shocked that was actually a tag??), Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Timeless, Angst with a Happy Ending, Based on a TV show, Christmas, Christmas In July | Christmas Out Of Season, Christmas Party, Christmas Truce of 1914, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, Non-Permanent Character Death, Pining, Sharing a Bed, Slow Dancing, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Spies & Secret Agents, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21893881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dylanobrienisbatman/pseuds/Dylanobrienisbatman
Summary: Murphy got tapped to come work for a special project after he was arrested for stealing a military vehicle right off of the base (long story). Turns out the special project... involved time travel... so theres that. About 6 months after he signed on, it all went horribly sideways, and now they were chasing their friends across history, trying to stop them from making a horrible mistake.Thats how they end up in the middle of World War I France on Christmas day in 1914.Thats how she dies.And then... somehow... the day begins again.Can he figure out a way to stop The Blake Siblings from wrecking history forever and also save the girl?
Relationships: Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Minor Bellamy Blake/Echo - Relationship
Series: Chopped Challenge Fics [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652851
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14
Collections: Chopped: Holiday Trope Exchange 1.0





	and i'll die by your side if you want me to

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justbecauseyoubelievesomething](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbecauseyoubelievesomething/gifts).



> This fic is for the Chopped: Holiday Trope Exchange! My four assigned tropes are: 
> 
> 1 - Based on a TV show (I chose Timeless)  
> 2 - Fake dating  
> 3 - Time loop/groundhog day AU  
> 4 - Soulmate AU (your soulmate mark is bright and silvery all your life, and it turns black when your soulmate dies)
> 
> title from 'my obsession' by pale waves (not my fave song by them but they're a great band give 18 a listen!)

Murphy had been staring at the concrete ceiling for an hour, hoping he would fall back to sleep, before he gave up. His rickety wire frame bed creaked from the strain as he blindly reached out to find his phone, tapping the screen to reveal that it was 5:22 am, and then groaned as he swung his legs over to plant his feet on the icy stone floor, rubbing his hand over his face, the shimmering silver light from the tendrils of his soulmate mark that curled into his palm bright against the insides of his eyelids. No point in lying in bed any longer if sleep was going to continue to evade him. Resigned to his fate, he stood up, threw on sweats and a tshirt, and some very warm socks, padding out into the bunker towards the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and start thumbing through the days assigned historical reading.

While the coffee dripped slowly, he thought about how he had ended up down here, an underground bunker that was freezing, even in July, chasing an old friend in a time machine to stop him from destroying the world.

_July 2018:_

He was sitting in a prison interview suite, handcuffed to the chair, and the table, wearing a jumpsuit in a lovely shade of white with his prison number emblazoned across the back, right under the words labelling him property of the federal government.

The man on the other side of the table was asking him questions.

Something about the military grade jeep that he had talked right off the lot on Mt. Weather Military Base.

He was droning on and on, and Murphy was counting the stripes on the man’s tie. 17. He'd counter three times. 

He didn’t have a reason, he didn’t have a plan, he just had wanted to see if he could do it. He bought a uniform from an army surplus store, stole a badge off some low level idiot he saw at a bar, took it to his favourite tech genius to get it refitted with his photo, bought the right fake décor for his fake uniform, and drove right onto the base, walked right onto the lot, and convinced the soldier at the gate that he had been sent by some higher up to drive it over.

He had been caught an hour down the road.

5 years in a federal prison, would have been more except the judge couldn’t quite believe how easily he had been able to convince that private to let him take the truck. That, and he had gotten caught because he had stopped to drive through somewhere and get a chicken sandwich and a milkshake, so his intentions of using the non-weaponised, empty jeep for anything nefarious was questionable.

It had been 6 months, and he was still getting asked questions.

His daydreaming was cut short when a short, dark skinned woman with a tight cropped haircut and a long scar snaking across her eye and forehead, who introduced herself as Agent Indra Arbre interrupted the interview and offered him an out. Come work for her, at some unnamed, unexplained, off the book’s government project, or sit in a cell for four and a half more years.

He hadn’t hesitated.

_Today:_

The hiss of the coffee pot to alert him the coffee was done pulled him out of his daydream, and he poured himself a cup, and walked over to the huge open space in the bunker where they kept the time machine.

The unnamed, unexplained, off the books project, was for a private company that had built a literal time machine. He had been called in to help with security for the project. Not physically, no, that’s what Echo was here for, but in the more… unconventional sense. He had spent his days at the start simply… attempting to break into, hack, discover, and expose the project from any possible angle, to show them where their weak spots where, while the team ran simulations on the huge, gleaming white sphere of a time machine.

Everything had changed, though, about 6 months ago, and now, he turned to go find his daily list of research topics that he was supposed to go through, before settling into the table in the common space with his tablet and his coffee, his music loud in his earphones as he set to work.

_January 2019:_

When Octavia Blake entered the bunker, he felt his whole world shift on its axis.

The curling arms and snaking lines of her soulmate mark were black, seeming almost hollowed out against her skin.

Lincoln was dead.

Soul marks were… a complicated thing. Everyone was born with one, bright and shining against their skin. The patterns were, so far, unexplained, and everyone’s seemed to be different, like a snowflake, or a fingerprint. They snaked and curled all over the body, always originating at the base of the skull and wrapping down and around to the front of the body. And there they stayed, all your life, ever constant and bright, until the day your soulmate died.

That was the kicker. You didn’t ever know, not really, that someone was your soulmate until they were dead. And then… they either were, or they weren’t. He had heard so many stories of married couples who swore, _swore_ , that they just knew that their partner was their soulmate, and then one day, while they were both very much alive, one of them would watch as the other’s soul mark turned black.

He didn’t believe anyone could just _know_ who their soul mate was, because that was the point. You didn’t know, there was no way to know, until the end. A bit sadistic, but it almost made him like it more. It let him live his life however he wanted, because he wouldn’t ever be able to be sure anyway. He wasn’t bound to anyone.

But Octavia? She knew.

Lincoln, they would discover later, was killed by an agent of a secret society called Rittenhouse, that had spread like a disease through the highest echelons of the most important organisations in the world.

Octavia begged Indra to let her take the machine back, just back to that morning, to stop it and save him, weeping and screaming in protest, but Indra never backed down.

They seemed to make it for a while, until the information regarding his killer emerged, and the idea of Rittenhouse because a tangible entity.

They woke the next morning to the sound of sirens going off, and when they ran into the huge, cavernous space where the time machine _should_ be, they found… nothing.

Octavia and Bellamy were gone, and they had taken the machine with them. 

Their historian, and a furious, grieving well trained soldier who had been learning to pilot the machine, on a mission to change history to save one man.

_Today:_

It was 7:15 before anyone joined him, but it was clear Echo had been awake even longer than he had. She had showered, but her face had the distinctive flush of someone who had worked out for quite some time before hand, and her stack of historical events to pick through was already half finished. He wondered if she had even slept at all.

Echo was Bellamy’s fiancé. They had been together when he stole the ship and fled, and he wasn’t sure she’d gotten a good night sleep since.

He got up and went to pour her a cup of coffee, setting down the steaming mug next to her depleted pile before sitting back down.

They didn’t talk, but that was how it was with Echo. She was frugal with her words, only speaking when she felt like the situation needed, especially more so now. But she was kind, and brilliant, and it was the type of silence that never felt like it should be filled with aimless noise anyway.

She flipped a page, and he tucked back in, reading about the treaty of Vienna in 1731. They had been assigned decades for the last few months, reading up on as many important events as possible in the hopes that they could fill the information gap that Bellamy had left behind while they looked for a new historian. They had been through 4. They had not panned out.

So, this week he had been assigned 1730-1739.

The morning sort of tapered on, Raven walked in at 730, already dressed and mumbling to herself with headphones on about some part or piece of something that needed to be fixed, pouring her coffee into a mug with a lid and walking out without much more than a nod.

Lexa, Indra’s second in command, came from the other direction around 8, meaning she had clearly been awake a while too, and had already been working.

He heard Indra’s phone ring from her office at about 8:10, and suddenly felt a little guilty about the hour he had just laid in bed, counting the marks on his concrete ceiling, though before that he had sort of thought a 530 start was him getting a jump start on his day.

He wondered how often everyone else was up before 6 working and they had just kept letting him sleep in.

The thought was swept from his mind, though, when he looked up at the sound of the last member of their team walking in.

Emori was in the middle of plaiting her hair, her hair tie between her teeth and a sort of vacant yet focused expression painted across her face. Her heavily lined soul mark was bright against her face as it curled down from her hairline and across her cheek, and he smiled as he always did at the delicate floral pattern she had tattooed around it. She refocused her eyes when she seemed to realise she was in the common space, and he was rewarded for being the first person she saw with a blinding smile that would have knocked him on his ass, if he had been standing.

He felt the soft warmth that seemed to spread through his chest anytime he saw her, and he smiled back before averting his eyes back to his paper, staring at it blankly until the feeling went away.

The day seemed to be going slow, almost a sort of cosy accidental day off, when the alarms blared loudly and the team shot into action.

Raven was at the terminal already, tinkering around, so she was quick to start. Not 5 minutes went by before she was yelling out date and location.

“It says December 23, 1914, somewhere in France?”

The room was quiet, and it felt like it took years for the silence to settle.

A nervousness started, a little fidget here, Echo biting at her lower lip anxiously, before somehow, somewhere, in the back of his mind, Murphy pulled out a win.

“Wait… Christmas 1914? That was the Christmas Truce of 1914. The Allied and Central powers agreed to lay down their arms on Christmas day. They would mingle in no man’s lands, they did burials and prisoner swaps, they exchanged food and played football, all kinds of stuff. It was completely unofficial, but it happened all over the war.”

For a minute, everyone just stared at him.

“What?” He said, breaking the silence.

“Did you have the 19 teens?” Lexa asked, trying to recall the schedule she had created.

“Nope, just one of those weird things you remember I guess.”

“Uhuh…”

It was good enough for Raven, though, who yelled to him asking if he knew what they might be doing.

“Not really, I mean the truce wasn’t official or even total, so disrupting it wouldn’t really change anything, at least I don’t think. I’m sure they’re after someone important, but I don’t know who that would be.”

Indra’s voice cut in from her doorway, where she was leaning, watching them expectantly.

“So… who is going to start looking up what happened during World War I in December of 1914?” She said, her voice sharp but not cruel.

They sprang into action, pulling computers out and typing furiously.

It was Echo who found it first.

“It says here that on December 26, the British Expeditionary Force branched off into the First Army, run by Douglas Haig?” She said, unsure. “They say that group was in France for the rest of the war, and he specifically was instrumental in leading the forces that ended the war in 1918?”

“Sounds like a decent place to start.” Said Emori, and they sprang into action. Murph was dressed in Allied uniforms from WWI, Emori was dressed as a nurse, and Echo was just dressed in her usual camouflage gear, with a bag of options.

She was their spy, after all.

They jumped in the Lifeboat, all dressed and all packed, and the routine sense of fear washed over him as he strapped himself in, before reaching across to help strap Emori in, which had somehow evolved into some sort of habit after all this time.

Emori spun her seat around, pressing all the buttons and bringing the machine to life, opening it up for Raven to key in the coordinates before turning herself back around, and holding tightly to the straps.

In the back of his mind, some alternate version of him who was a little bit braver than he was reached across and grabbed her hand, letting her squeeze tight. This version of him stayed still, remembering to loosen his jaw a little so he didn’t crack a tooth like he did the first time, and they popped away. 

His teeth felt like they weren’t quite set in his jaw, and his insides always felt like they had been scrambled and then unscrambled in the few seconds it took to pop from home to somewhere else, and his eyes hurt.

But he was fine. Technically.

Echo groaned in the seat across from him, and he just smiled. Neither of them enjoyed the trip.

Emori, on the other hand, whooped loudly, like she always did, and spun her seat around, grinning.

“Ready to go?” He asked, amused, as she fumbled over the strap of her seat in excitement.

“Oh, shut up John, just help me out of here.”

He obliged, and moments later, they stepped out into a snowy forest somewhere in the wilds of 1914 France.

\---

They walked for 30 minutes before they found some Allied forces parked on the side of the road with 3 big trucks, and Murphy and Emori talked their way onto a truck that would take them into town. Meanwhile, Echo snuck into the back of one of the other trucks and snagged some era appropriate weaponry.

That was the one rule, no bringing 21st century weapons into the past. The dangers if it was discovered were too high.

They did however, keep high tech radios in their knapsacks, and she sent two pings to let them know she was out of sight and on the move, which they felt vibrate against their backs.

They slid into the back of the truck, and they were driven into town.

Their cover story was that he was escorting a nurse who had been reassigned, and they were to meet their envoy at an inn in a village nearby, which seemed to work well enough for the soldiers, who drove them the 10 miles it was to the village, and dropped them on the doorstep of the Inn.

They walked inside, and up to the counter, where they discovered their original cover story wouldn't quite suffice. 

“A room for two, please.” He said pleasantly, and Emori tried her best to look both threatening and meek at the same time.

“You won’t be staying with a lady, sir.” The matronly innkeeper responded sharply, and he suddenly remembered it was 1914, and the idea of a soldier and a nurse sharing a room was unconscionable. They had to plan, and it was safer to be together, but his brain was falling out of his ears trying to respond.

Thankfully, it took only a second for Emori to pipe up from behind him.

“Oh, this is my husband.” She said, her voice soft and gentle, very different from her generally sharp tone.

“Your husband?” replied the woman, her tone unconvinced.

“Oh yes,” Emori replied, quick to the jump, “I was training as a nurse at home when he got called up, so I volunteered to go with him. It is our anniversary, and Christmas, and his commander was generous enough to allow us just a few days. We’d just like a bed, and a hot bath each, and maybe some dinner if you can manage.”

His brain finally caught up with his surroundings, and he took Emori’s hand that she had been resting on the counter and pressed a kiss into her knuckles, hoping he managed an enraptured gaze.

She caught his eye a moment but looked away quickly, and his heart sank into his stomach.

But that didn’t matter now, because the innkeeper passed them a key, and Emori passed her some coins, and they were sent up to a room on the third floor, and told two baths and meal would be sent up shortly.

They sat in the room on either end of the bed, flipping through the small packet that had been printed up for them about the events of the following few days, waiting for Echo’s call that she had discovered his location. It could take her a while, so they just sat back, and got to work.

He left the room while she bathed, and he returned the courtesy, and they were brought hot bowls of some kind of stew that definitely needed a little salt but over all wasn’t bad. The night grew dark faster than either of them realised, and exhaustion washed over him. It had been a much longer day than he had even realised, and now, warm and clean and fed, sitting on a not entirely uncomfortable bed with a fire crackling in the hearth of the room, he felt his eyes droop, and noticed Emori’s doing the same.

He stood, dragging a pillow with him, and went to lay down in front of the fire, but he as he passed the foot of the bed, she caught his arm.

“We’re both adults, and who knows when the maid will be here with breakfast in the morning. Just lay down.” She didn’t sound exasperated or even resigned. Something else was laced into the words, but he didn’t have the brain space or the mind to parse it out at that moment, so he just helped her put all the documents back into their bags, and lay down flat on his stomach, falling asleep in moments.

He slept like a rock, which likely had something to do with the poor night sleep the night before, and also possibly the time travel. He woke slowly, a little confused, to find Emori had tucked herself into his back completely when he had rolled onto his side in his sleep. She wasn’t wrapped around him, or even spooning him, she was curled into a little ball with her shins and her little icy nose pressed into his back. As soon as he moved, she groaned in her sleep and woke up too, backing away from him before he rolled over.

He kept his eyes shut, because part of him wasn’t sure he would be okay seeing her all sleep tousled and warm while she was in the same bed as him, so he rolled onto his back and pressed his hands into his eyes, letting the silvery light help him wake up.

The fire had gone out in the night, and the room was frigid, but the thick down blanket had kept them warm underneath it. He slipped out, keeping the blanket low, and pulled on a jacket, going over to restart with the wood and tinder left in the room for them.

The fire was roaring and Emori had come out from under the blanket, sitting cross legged against the headboard, when the maid knocked with breakfast. They asked her for two cups of boiling water, and made instant coffee as soon as she shut the door, laying all the papers out on the floor as they sipped their coffee and at their toast with jam, and set to trying to make a plan.

It was past lunch when they heard their bags buzz on the ground, and Echo sounded tired on the other end.

“He’s holed up at a fort near the Belgian border, I’m forwarding the coordinates to Em. Octavia has been here; you guys need to book it. I’d say it’s likely a 10-hour drive from the town you’re in so if you can get yourself a car and get going, that would be good. I’ve got a little cabin, it was empty when I got here, and close to the fort. I’ll send you those coordinates as well and meet you there asap.”

It was abrupt, and he noticed quietly that she said Octavia had been there, not Bellamy, which didn’t feel like a mistake but also didn’t feel like the truth. Based on the look on Emori’s face, she noticed it too.

“I can’t believe he just left her.” She whispered. “I mean, he left all of us, but…”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Neither of them said anything about Echo leaving the ring sitting on her dresser every day since he’d been gone. Not putting it away, or throwing it out, but also not wearing it. Like she was existing in a kind of middle space.

They shared another glance, and he wondered how he’d feel if Emori had been the one to go. Would he feel trapped in some middle space of how he felt about her and what she had done? He watched as she pulled her hair back into a knot on her head, sweeping the long brown hairs off her neck as she stretched.

Yeah, it was likely he would.

It would be getting dark soon, the days short this time of year, so they packed up and ordered an early dinner, eating quickly and getting dressed into their warmest clothes, before heading out once it was dark to the back, where military vehicles were parked. They wandered through until they found one Emori could hotwire, him standing watch while she did, and they were off, driving through the night.

They quickly realised the need for back roads, being in a stolen car in a warzone and all, and the drive was suddenly 12 hours, not ten, and so they drove. And drove. And drove. they switched cars twice, trying to put people off the scent. Until the sky was starting to turn a greenish blue as the sun rose up over the horizon, and the clouds were turning pink, and the little cabin came into view, they drove.

They climbed out of the car in a town up the road and turned around and walked back almost 5 miles to the house.

When Echo opened the door, John was surprised they didn’t collapse on her from pure exhaustion. 

She ushered them into the house, and they collapsed on the bed she had set up, falling asleep almost instantly.

When they woke, she was sitting on the couch, thumbing through their plans they’d been drawing up, and got right to business.

Coffee in hand, they planned.

Echo had gotten them invitations to a dinner party at the fort for Christmas, increasing the rank on Murphy’s credentials until it warranted notice from the general. That was when she brought up Bellamy.

“He was there. Playing secretary like I was, getting an invitation for Octavia.”

“He what?” Emori asked, suddenly furious.

“He… he didn’t… something is off with him. I don’t know if this is safe for you guys to go…”

“We have to go, to try and protect the general.”

Echo looked resigned, but something in her expression made Murphy nervous.

“You’ll be husband and wife, it’s the only way I could get you two tickets.”

Murphy sideways glanced at Emori, and to his relief found her laughing quietly.

They both just shrugged, his heart leapt into his chest, and they continued planning.

Emori was dressed in a beautiful green dress with long open sleeves and a high neckline, and he was in his dress uniform, and Echo had piled her hair up high into a hat and was driving them. She’d stop long before the checkpoint, but to a passer-by, her height and strong jaw would be enough to go without notice in a moving car.

As they drove, he was fidgeting uncomfortably in his seat. Something about the way Echo had told them not to go had stuck in his mind, like maybe Bellamy had tried to keep them away for a reason. He was picking at his cuticles when Emori reached over and grabbed his top hand. He stopped moving, lifting his hand to rest it on her knee, catching her grin out of the corner of his eye.

He needed to pull it together, needed to get into the zone.

He looked at her again, and for a moment, the idea of just pretending to be her husband was enough motivation to slow down a little and begin to put himself together. He thought, just maybe, if he could just dance with her, he could hold it together. If he could hold her hand, it would be okay.

Echo parked them a mile or so away from the house, and he took Emori by the arm, and they walked the few minutes to the road, where horse drawn carriages were stopping to collect straggling guests. They had to squeeze in close, the warm blanket thrown over their laps hidding it from view when she laced their fingers together.

Hidden from view, but also pretend. It sent his mind reeling, in a direction not exactly useful, so he pulled their hands out from under the blanket to kiss her knuckles and let them rest above the blanket when he set them down. No need to be more confusing than it already was.

They arrived at a small mountain home of some particularly important French general, and the evening began.

They stood hand in hand, arm in arm, as the evening drew on, and the longer it went without him seeing Octavia or Bellamy, the more uneasy he became.

Emori, for her part, looked every bit the irritated wife as she could possibly manage while asking him what was wrong in the gentlest and most concerned voice, a very odd dichotomy to witness up close.

He tried to tell her, but as soon as he did, the host spoke loudly in French, and the crowd of soldiers and women surrounding them moved like a wave in calm little pond to the dance floor, taking positions for a waltz.

Emori looked at him questioningly, a hand held out, and he took pause. He needed to focus, something was off, and he knew it.

“We need to focus on the mission.” He said quietly, trying to look apologetic, but the way she looked told him he didn’t quite master it.

A flash of something ran across her face, so fast you’d miss it if you didn’t study the lines in her forehead and the creases in her cheek the way he did.

As fast as it was there, it was gone, and her smile was back, not quite as in her eyes as it had been before.

“We’re supposed to be married, John. Married people dance.” It wasn’t a question, so he just took her hand, and let himself be led out as the music swelled up around him.

“Sorry if I step on your toes.” He whispered, trying not to stare as her eyes twinkled brighter than any of the lights in the room, and they began to spin.

So close, closer every turn, until they weren’t waltzing anymore, just swaying to the music on the edge of the dance floor, her hand in his held pressed between them against his chest as they looked at each other. The room felt like it was empty around them, the noise fading to a soft muffled sound, until the only noise was his own heart beating loudly in his ears.

As if she was reading his mind, she pressed up a little on her toes just as he bent down, and they met perfectly in the middle for a kiss. Her lips were soft and tasted like the menthol in her chap stick, cool against his lips. He tightened the grip of his hand on her waist, pulling her in closer and trying to remember where they were. She opened her lips just a little, capturing his bottom lip between hers and holding him there a moment longer, like she was savouring it. When they pulled back, he opened his eyes in time to see hers still closed, a soft smile across her face. The sounds of the room came rushing back in slowly, until the steady roar of the crowd was back in full force.

She smiled up at him brightly and stepped back.

“I’ll go grab us a drink.” He said softly, kissed her palm lightly before stepping away, thinking about the way she smelled, softly of jasmine and musk, and the way her breath had hitched a little when their lips had touched.

He was smiling when he heard it.

A commotion back in the ballroom, he could hear it from the kitchen, the loud stampede of footsteps, screaming, and when he stuck his head out of the door to see what was going on, he watched as Octavia ran past him.

It was like it was in slow motion, her turning her head to see him, her eyes growing wide, glancing back at the ballroom, never slowing down in her sprint away, and his stomach dropped out of his chest.

Before he could even step into the hallway, a light burst in the centre of the room, and he was blown backwards, and everything went black.

The first thing he noticed when he woke up was the ringing in his ears, which slowly turned into the sounds of screaming, a horrible noise that ripped at his ears, and then he realised where he was, and what had happened.

He put his hands over his eyes, hoping the warm light from his mark would help bring him back to consciousness, but when he brought them up, there was nothing but darkness.

He opened his eyes and looked at his palms.

The marks were black.

“Emori” He whispered, a sob and a scream all at the softest volume, and then he was unconscious again.

He woke up in the bedroom of the Inn.

\---

At first, in the dark, the cold on his face didn’t register anything, but as he woke up slowly, he noticed it. The bed was the same, soft and not uncomfortable, a thick down comforter spread over him.

That, and he could feel her.

Her toes pressed against the top of his tailbone, her knees and shins level with his back, her nose pressed into his shoulder blade, her soft breath washing over his skin.

He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to push away the horrible dream. She was dead, he knew she was.

The room had exploded.

His mark had gone dark.

Out of habit, he raised his hands to press them into his eyes, and he was met with a warm light behind his eyelids.

He almost leapt out of the bed in shock.

He rolled over, so fast that it shook her awake, and there she was, her soft brown hair falling over her forehead, a tiny bit of drool crusted on her lip, her eyes wild with the surprise.

He had to physically stop himself from kissing her.

“Are you alright?” She asked, her voice raspy and thick with sleep

“Yeah, fine, just…” He paused, staring at her. The image of his marks, black and vacant, flashed before his eyes. “Just a bad dream.” He whispered, hoping it was true.

He got up, careful with the blanket again, put on a coat and started a fire. Before the maid had even really gotten started, he went downstairs and brought their breakfast up himself, with two mugs of steaming water for their coffee.

She had laid out all the papers, the same as she had done… yesterday?

He pressed his fingers into his eyes again in confusion.

A bad dream, that’s what it had been, he tried to tell himself, but he knew it wasn’t true.

He was living the same day over again.

They planned, and he waited impatiently for Echo’s message, and then they drove and drove, collapsing into sleep on the bed at the cabin after almost 24 hours awake.

Echo told them the plan, and he thought of the bright light, the somehow silent explosion, and the darkness of his own palm, and he finally spoke up.

“We can’t do that.” He said, matter of fact, after Emori tried to argue with Echo.

Emori looked at him in surprise.

“You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but…” He tried to think of a way to say it that wouldn’t sound insane, but so far nothing was working, so he just said it plainly.

“I lived this day once already. I know, that sounds insane.” He said quickly in response to their expressions. “But I did. You don’t think it’s a good idea, and you’re right. They’re gonna blow that place up, and Emori is gonna die.” He tried to be matter of fact, but he was pretty sure the only reason they weren’t laughing at him was because he looked so serious.

“Murphy… explain.” Echo said, her voice steady.

“Yesterday, we went to the ball. Echo, you got Emori a green dress, and tickets to the Christmas ball the Haig is going to be at. You drove us there, and we went in, and we were dancing, and… and I went to grab us a drink and there was this huge commotion. I looked out of the kitchen and Octavia ran by, and she saw me… there was this look in her eyes almost like… horror… and then the ballroom blew up. I woke up, confused and disoriented, and… realised… you were dead, and then I passed out again, and then I woke up in bed this morning.”

“Weird dream.” Emori said softly under her breath, and he nodded at her.

“I know it sounds completely insane, but… please listen to me. I wouldn’t believe me if I were me but…” he trailed off, and Echo looked pensive. Emori looked horrified.

The room was quiet, the air between them all wary and strange.

“Well… what do you suggest?” Echo finally said in response.

“We go, and we find the general, and get out.” He said, trying to be steady.

“And what if we can’t?”

“We knock him out and drag him.”

“Attacking an Allied general in the middle of a temporary ceasefire?” Emori asked incredulously, her eyebrows lost in the flowers of her tattoo as she lifted them towards her hairline.

“We figure it out. Maybe pretend to be spies, warn him of the danger?”

“Maybe we can stop them from doing it at all.” Echo interrupted and they both turned to look at her.

“If Octavia shows up, plants the bomb, and runs, maybe we can cut them off before they even get in?”

“I think she was in way before it started, and we have no way of knowing how or where. She came out of the party, but I never saw her come in, and I never saw her while we were inside.”

“Okay… I have an idea.” Echo said, and they set to work.

They were dropped off off the beaten path again, but this time, Echo took off running through the woods rather than turning the car back.

Murphy took a breath, and then turned to offer Emori his arm, seeing a look of fear in her eyes.

He tried to find words, but everything he came up with sounded fake or underwhelming, so instead he just stood there mute, waiting.

“I died here.” She whispered, closing her eyes and taking a breath.

“But we have a better plan this time.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re right.”

“Maybe you’ll get to try again if we die.”

“Maybe…” He felt himself hoping so, the blackened pattern of his soul mark running across the insides of his eyelids when he blinked.

For a moment, he felt the confession a breath from falling off his tongue. He held his breath instead.

She lifted her arm, and he exhaled when he offered her his arm again, and they walked towards their fear.

The party was in full swing when they arrived, and she plastered a false grin across her face and pulled him out onto the dance floor.

The bright lights across the room left a warm glow on her skin, and her dress matched the massive pine wreaths that dotted the wall, and he couldn’t believe the crowd of people could look at anything but her as she spun around to the music.

They danced, and all he could think about was the kiss, wondering if she would let him kiss her now if he tried. Wondering if the way she felt yesterday was the way she felt today. The music had slowed to something lovely, a song that felt wispy above the party in a strange way, as if it was offering him a chance to find out, and they came closer together swaying and spinning slowly through the room.

He looked down into her eyes, and felt himself leaning, letting his nose brush against hers, and for a second his heart swopped high into the air…

And then she backed away, just slightly, clearly a rejection, and it came crashing down into his stomach.

“Have you heard from Echo yet?” She whispered, her gaze just over his shoulder at the clock.

“Nu-no. No.” He said, backing up just slightly.

The kiss from the night before replayed in his mind, but now it had a different tint to it. Of course not, he thought, of course not. She was pretending to be his wife. A slow, romantic waltz, in a room full of people, a kiss seemed… natural. In a performative way.

“Maybe we should go check on her…” She said, nerves clearly returning, and he nodded.

As if on cue, the waltz that had played the night before swelled out from the quartet, and his heart rate rose fast.

He tugged her hand, finding the door in the back of the room that Octavia had come out of, opening into a staircase that led directly down into the cellar.

The scene that met them ripped a sob out of Emori’s chest.

Octavia lay on the ground, bleeding heavily, the bomb tucked beneath her arm as her lead lolled, barely conscious.

Echo was worse for the wear, and he and Emori ran to her.

Barely choking out breath, she couldn’t speak, but her eyes were full of fear, and apology.

She had failed, and because of it, they would all die.

Octavia had armed the bomb.

Murphy suddenly wished they were in an action movie, where someone suspiciously knew how to disarm a bomb, but Emori was surely the best bet, and she hadn’t leapt to the task yet.

Emori turned, trying to beg with Octavia to turn it off, but her eyes had closed, and when they looked back, Echo’s were vacant, her body limp.

He opened his mouth to speak, to tell her he was sorry, or to tell her he loved her, but suddenly the room was bright, and hot, and then everything was gone.

He woke up in the bedroom of the Inn.

\---

He sat up fast, so fast he saw stars a little, and reached blindly in the dark room for his comm device, where he called Echo.

She answered, clearly already long awake.

“What are you doing up?” She asked in place of a greeting.

“Listen, I can’t explain, but…” Yet again, the words sounded ridiculous in his head. He heard Emori sit up in bed behind him. “Okay, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’ve lived this day before. Twice. You’re going to go get us tickets to a party later, as a married couple, and when you’re there, you’ll run into Bellamy. You have to prevent him from getting a ticket, somehow, and then get him to the cabin. Him and Octavia are going to blow up and the party… and we’ve died both times.”

Silence from the other end was deafening, until she took a breath.

“I’d say you were insane, but then I’d have to ask how you knew about the cabin… and the party…” She sounded baffled and stunned.

“Me and Em will head your way right now, see you there.”

“Alright.” She said, sharp and more focused. “I’ll figure out how to get him here.”

“Without the tickets, it’ll be harder for O to get in to set up the bomb. The place is secure as anything we’ve ever seen, and a disruption in their plan will make it hard for her to come up with a plan B on short notice.”

“You’re right.” She said, so focused on her own thoughts she now sounded distracted from their conversation. She pulled back in for a moment, though, to mock him.

Very on brand for her.

“Though, I have to say, you being the tactical expert is a bit disconcerting.” She snuffed out a laugh. “You usually just run on chaos and hope it works.”

“Well, living it twice makes it easier to plan. See you soon.” He hung up and turned.

Emori seemed to have had the time to sit and consider what he had been saying, so she didn’t look nearly as confused as she had the first time he’d told her this. She still asked, which was understandable.

“You’ve lived this twice?”

“Yeah.”

“And we died both times?”

He paused, but decided it was better to tell her the truth.

“You died the first time; we all died the second time.”

“Right.”

He sat, for almost 5 minutes, while she sat quietly, and he could almost see the gears turning inside her head, trying to make it make sense.

“It doesn’t make sense to me either, if that helps at all?” He poses it as a question, but he knows it doesn’t.

She takes a breath and turns to face him directly.

“It doesn’t, but it’s not going to. But you know where the cabin is, which defies all logic other than that you’re telling the truth, so for now…” The look of nerves that he had seen before the party the night before, but she set her jaw and looked him in the eye. “Let’s get going then.”

They packed up, and Emori snuck out into the car park and hotwired the same car as the past two times.

He wondered if they picked a different car, would it change the outcome. How small of a change would save them?

He climbed into the driver’s seat and punched it.

They arrived at the cabin well after dark had fallen, opening the door to find Bellamy sat on the couch, Echo standing, leaning against the door frame of the kitchen. There was an uncomfortable silence between the two of them, and Emori gave him a sidelong glance that he answered with a raised eyebrow. 

“So, you’re Groundhog Day-ing it?” Bellamy asked, sitting with his elbows on his knees.

“Seems like it.” He snarled back and turned away from him.

He might not have killed Emori, not really, but he had done it twice in Murphy’s world, and he wasn’t quite ready to be civil yet.

His nails cut into the skin on his palm as he clenched his fist tight to keep from rounding on him.

He turned his attention to Echo instead.

“Anything?”

“No, but you know more than us.” Echo didn’t look at him, her eyes trained on Bellamy’s face.

It was times like these where he remembered just why Echo was so good at her job. There was no emotion visible on her face. A smooth, deceptive mask, she was able to contain her feelings so well, that he couldn’t tell whether she loved or hated Bellamy in that moment. Her only tell was her left ring finger, tapping lightly against her other arm, which she had skilfully crossed behind her back to hide it from his view.

“Well, I know where she’s going to be, so if we can get going now, maybe you can sneak in before she arrives and stop her. We can go to the party and head right down as well, stop it all before it starts?”

Echo nodded, almost imperceptible, and the stood straight, grabbing the handcuffs off the counter and dragging Bellamy from the couch, settling him on the floor next to the radiator in the cabin, cuffing him too it.

“Lets’ go.” She said, turning away from him, and collected the clothing bag from her bed, stuffed her feet into her boots, yanked on her jacket, and walked towards the door.

Bellamy, to his credit, didn’t argue or fight. But he did speak.

“Just don’t kill her. Please.”

Echo stopped in her tracks but didn’t turn around.

“She… she’s trying to save him. She just wants him alive.”

Echo just nodded, and her and Emori walked out to the car.

Murphy, however, stayed another minute. He thought about the feeling that had washed over him when he saw the dark marks winding over his skin, and he turned sharply.

“You killed Emori.” He said, his voice low.

Bellamy seemed to have nothing to say.

“I woke up, bruised and broken in a house that had been blown to bits by you and your psycho little sister, and you want to know what I realised?” He stepped closer. “Emori had been right there, in the same room as that bomb your sister set off, and when I woke up, my marks were black.”

Bellamy’s eyes widened, but Murphy kept speaking.

“You and your sister, you killed my soulmate. And do you want to know something? I think my deal would have been worse than hers. You’re supposed to be my friend. My brother. And you killed my soulmate. But when I woke up, my response wasn’t rage, or vengeance. I wasn’t going to try to find a way to ruin the whole world just to get her back. I was going to kill you. And your sister. Don’t get me wrong, before I passed out, I had already decided that. But I wouldn’t go back in time and make sure you were never born, or anything ridiculous like that. No. No, your sister was always this way, she always needed some cause to let her let out all that anger that she never got to let out as a childhood. Well, guess what Bellamy. A shitty childhood doesn’t excuse what she’s doing, and neither does the loss of Lincoln. He’d be ashamed of the way she’s using his death. She could have just killed Pike and been done, but she’s gone too far.” He took a breath, months’ worth of anger pouring out of him towards this person who was supposed to be his family. “Maybe, if you both survive this, you should try and talk some sense into her. Echo might be a mask, but I’m not, and if you keep hurting us…” He trailed off and turned to go.

“It’s just grief.” Bellamy said, but his voice sounded unsure, quiet and shaky. A tear fell down his cheek, and his jaw was tight.

“Find a better way to cope.” He snarled back and opened the door, walking to the car.

They drove, arriving when the moon was high in the sky, and they climbed out of the car, bags in tow, and snuck into the basement of the house in the dark of night. The security was still high, but he knew the lay of the land pretty well, and Echo… well Echo was Echo, wasn’t she.

They found their way into the cellar, which was blessedly free of Octavia, and thus began their watch.

All night, and well into the morning, they slept in shifts, watching the door, each of them clinging to the gun Echo had given them, but Octavia didn’t show. Once they could tell guests were beginning to arrive, Echo made them both change, and head back up to the party.

“She killed you last time.”

“And I killed her. And this time, I’m here to surprise her, not the other way around.”

Emori looked just as uncertain as he felt, but Echo seemed sure of herself, and shooed them away, a comm device in his pocket, and a gun in a holster around Emori’s thigh and around his own shoulders under his coat.

They walked out the back of the house, and around the woods far enough that they could easily have been walking from a car, entering the party with snow still on their boots.

The room was exactly the same as it had been both times prior, but to Emori it was new, and she looked awed at the beautiful Christmas tree and the bright, shimmering garlands wrapped around the pillars of the room, and then grabbed his hand and tried to drag him out onto the dance floor again.

He stood his ground, pulling her back.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. We have no idea what Octavia’s new plan is going to be, we need to stay sharp, pay attention.”

“We could pay attention while we dance.” She said softly, but it was almost resigned to his suggestion. He ignored the slightly hurt look that flashed behind her eyes.

He grabbed them two flutes of champagne from the passing waiter and passed her one.

She downed it in one long gulp.

He chased the waiter down, and grabbed two more, just to be safe.

“I never liked Christmas as a child.” Was the first thing she said when he stepped back up to their little table.

“Oh?” He said, pressing gently to get the conversation moving, which he knew she needed sometimes.

“It was lonely. It’s supposed to be this joyful, loving holiday, and it was always just me. Well, me and Otan, but he was sort of absent anyway, I honestly think he was in jail on a few Christmases, grabbed for trying to swipe stuff during the holiday chaos. He never told me, but I always knew when he came back from that type of place.”

She took a sip from the second flute, her shoulders coming down from her ears a bit as she first flute seemed to wash over her gently. “And all the decorations, the trees and the lights and all that… it seemed… like the world was trying to shove it in my face that I didn’t have it.”

He was quiet for a second, letting her have the space to keep talking if she wanted. Once it was clear she didn’t, he spoke.

“My dad died the week before Christmas. The first year, it was… the most horrible Christmas I ever had. Just… grief. That’s all it was. The year after, my mom, she tried to... overdo it. More gifts than we could afford, more decorations than we needed. I’m pretty sure I ate so many Christmas cookies I threw up three separate times. But it wasn’t better, it was somehow worse. Like we were trying to erase it.”

She looked at him, her eyes soft and sad. Sometimes the way the world had treated them both become so apparent, and it always broke his heart.

“And that was also the year she started drinking. She overdid it because she was drunk the whole year anyway, so now eggnog and mulled wine were acceptable forms of self-destruction. That was the last year we even had a Christmas, and she died 2 years later.”

“Did you ever have good Christmases?” She asked, her eyes dancing across his face, trying to read every minute expression.

“Oh yeah. My dad died when I was 7, so only remember like two of them, but they were great. We didn’t have a lot, but we were so happy it didn’t even matter.” It was his turn to drain his glass. Thinking about his father always made him want to drink. “When I was five, he bought a beautiful red bike, it was still the best gift I ever got.”

She gave him a sad smile, and he felt himself back away from it in revulsion, the way he always did when it felt like pity was being passed his way, but he stopped himself. Emori didn’t pity him, she would never. Her sadness came from understanding, from knowing what it was like to feel this sense of deep unfairness and anger at the world.

He scratched absently at the silver marks that swirled over his neck.

“If you could get anything for Christmas, what would it be?” He asked her, staring at the doorway, looking for Octavia’s dark hair and sharp cheekbones through the crowd.

“Anything?”

“Yeah, anything.”

“I’d like an apartment.’

That broke him away from his surveillance.

“What?”

“Well you said anything!”

“Yeah, but… what?”

“I’d want an apartment, one that was mine. Nothing big or fancy, just… a place that I could come home too. Where I could keep my things. Where I could maybe have a family someday.”

Stability. That’s what she wanted most. He felt his heart ache for that life with her.

“What about you?”

Thankfully, at that moment, the comm in his pocket buzzed, saving him from having to answer.

Which was great, because the only thing he could think of to say was _her_.

Echo had buzzed once, which meant Octavia had entered the cellar downstairs. 

This was the part of the plan he hated.

“Go.” She told him, her voice urgent, but he couldn’t move, his feet cemented to the ground.

This was the plan.

She was supposed to go help Echo, while he, a seemingly decorated military officer, was supposed to lead General Haig out of the party.

He hated this plan.

“You have to go.” Emori said, her eyes wild, turning to leave, but he grabbed her arm, tugging her back to him and kissing her.

It wasn’t perfect, not like the first kiss, the one she would never remember, but it was perfectly imperfect. Her hands fluttered uselessly around his shoulders for a moment before settling on his arms, and she didn’t kiss back right away, but when she did, he felt her melt into his arms just a little, and a soft sound escaped her throat that he wanted to taste.

“You.” He said, almost as confused with himself as she looked, but his brain seemed to be running on autopilot. “You’re what I want for Christmas.” He knew this wasn’t the time, that Echo needed their help, but he couldn’t stop it. He had to tell her, even if he had to do the day all over again tomorrow. “When you died in the first timeline, I didn’t, and when you died, my soul mark turned black.”

The awestruck and starry-eyed look on her face slowly turned loving and amused, and her smile was so bright he was sure he’d gone blind.

She didn’t say anything, just reached up on her toes and kissed him again, soft and gentle, and then pulled back, stepping away towards the door, and shouted ‘GO’ as she ran.

He felt like he’d been struck dumb, but he pulled himself together.

He found the General and his wife in a corner of the party, and he put on his most official persona.

“Sir, you’re going to need to come with me.”

It took a little gentle persuasion, but he was able to talk the general out of the ballroom and into the room on the furthest end of the house, where he stood, between the general and the door, with his gun raised.

It seemed like hours before Emori knocked on the door, three sharp raps, followed by two quicker ones, and opened it. He held his gun high until he saw that she was with Echo, and Octavia was being dragged along behind them.

The sigh of relief he let out was deafening.

Echo took Octavia with her towards the car, and Murphy led the general back out into the party, apologies abound, but Haig just smiled, thanking him for saving him and his wife. He noticed their soul marks seemed to meet on their palms, and it made him smile.

He turned to leave them, but Emori grabbed his hand, pulling towards the dance floor.

“We should go, Echo is-“

“I told Echo we were going to stay for one dance. She can handle Octavia for a few minutes.”

“Oh.”

She tugged him out on the floor, and the waltz they had danced too on the first night swelled above the crowd, and he smiled.

A question danced across her smile, and he just grinned at her.

“We danced to this, the first night, and you kissed me.”

“I did?” She asked, her smile never faltering.

“You did. And then, the second time, I tried to kiss you, but you rejected me.”

“I did?!” She said, giggling this time.

“You did.” He said again, pulling her in closer. “I thought it must have meant the first kiss was just pretend. Playing married. Faking it for the crowd or something.”

She laughed out loud at that.

“When you turned me down to dance, I thought you must be trying to avoid playing husband anymore, that you didn’t want to dance with me because you didn’t want me to get the wrong idea.”

He shook his head.

“A bit of a disaster, aren’t we?” It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway, and laid her head on his chest as they swayed.

They left the party hand in hand and drove back to the cabin with Octavia and Echo, where they collected Bellamy, and drove to the lifeboat, with clear instructions.

“Get yourselves back, and then Em can come back and get the last of us.” Echo said as she shoved Bellamy into the seat across from Murphy.

“Aye-aye captain.” He said mockingly as Emori punched in their destination on the keypad.

The door shut, and as suddenly as they had popped into existence in this time, they popped right back out.

His teeth felt like they weren’t quite set in his jaw, and his insides felt like they had been scrambled and then unscrambled in the few seconds it took to pop home, and his eyes hurt, but all in all, he was fine, and this time, Emori was holding his hand.

He unhooked Bellamy, climbing out of the boat with him in tow, and he dragged him away as Emori shut the door, popping away.

It was only a few moments, but his heart was pounding in his chest, but they reappeared right where she had left, and Echo was pushing Octavia out when they opened the door.

It didn’t seem like they knew much what to do with them, but that wasn’t his concern for now.

He snuck off, while Emori and Raven set to work on the lifeboat.

\---

“Can you just tell me what it is?” She asked, her palms flat over her eyes.

“Absolutely not.” He said defiantly as he led her through the bunker towards what had once been a big empty room in the back.

“Okay, open them.”

She took her hands off her eyes and froze.

The room had been empty, except for storage, and he’d spent all night clearing it out, dragging his own queen bed into the room before setting to work.

He’d found an old couch somewhere, and covered it with a pretty blue sheet, and took a short, wide filing cabinet and covered it with a small blanket to function as a table. A bookcase in the corner had been filled with all of her books and trinkets that she kept, and a dresser (which was actually just another filing cabinet, but with more structured drawers) had been filed with her clothes, except two, which he hoped would be for his clothes someday.

He had gotten Indra’s permission, and went out to find a Christmas tree, which was rather difficult in July, which he had decorated with red and green paper garlands and popcorn strings like they did in old movies, and had found a few sets of old lights at a second-hand shop that he had put up around the room and the tree.

It wasn’t really that pretty, he never claimed to be an interior designer, or an artist, and he opened his mouth to say so when she spun round and kissed him soundly. 

Even with his eyes closed, the warm light from her soul mark, glittering across her face, was bright against the backs of his eyelids, and he relished in knowing that it glowed because they were meant to be. 

He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her close to him and kissing her with all his might, breathing in every bit of her, until they had to stop to catch their breath. Even then, they pulled back, and he peppered kisses across her cheeks and her nose, over her forehead, and down over her neck and collarbones, earning him a giggle and a swat of her hand.

“It’s not an apartment, and it’s not that pretty, but it’s yours. If you want it.” He looked at her again, smiling, and she turned in his arms, her back against his chest, allowing him to wrap his arms around her shoulders and kiss the top of her head.

“Ours.” She whispered, and he felt like his heart might burst.

“Merry Christmas, Emori.” He said softly against the curve of her ear.

“Merry Christmas, John.” She responded, turning back around to kiss him again.

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't watched Timeless, you 100% should. Lucy the historian is so amazing, lyatt is such a great ship, and the show is sooooo good. great historical settings, learn some new cool history every episode, meet some really interesting famous historical figures, all in all, an A++ show. 
> 
> to my lovely recipient: i LOVED these tropes, and i had such a good time writing this fic. it took me a while to figure out what i was going to do, but once i did, it took off in a such a nice way. thanks for participating in our gift exchange, i hope you enjoy this fic!


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